The new holiday season direct-to-consumer campaign from Baby Dove in Canada allows consumers to personalize the packaging via a microsite, ready for home delivery. It’s aimed at gifting for the holidays as well as birthdays and baby showers, and is part of a rollout that also covers the US and UK. Choosing a direct-to-consumer platform allows Dove to engage personally with consumers, gives it access to useful first-party data, and provides Dove with a space for piloting products.

Dollar Shave Club, the Unilever-owned subscription-based direct-to-consumer brand, continues to extend the line beyond its male grooming origins, with a line of six fragrances, called Blueprint. Founder and CEO, Michael Dubin, said fragrance for men is a part of what men want in the bathroom to get ready for the day ahead, and most of DSC’s members have more than one cologne. Fragrance developer Ann Gottlieb said DSC’s fragrances are premium products at affordable price. DSC offered existing customers samples of fragrances in their DSC boxes, and the new products will become a part of the brand’s full-service offering, which it has been testing. DSC is also testing physical retail with vending machines selling trial-size versions of the brands’ products.

Now available on Clinique.com is Clinique iD, a personalized system for skin hydration based on its Dramatically Different Moisturizer skin lotions. Visitors to the site first choose from one of the lotions as a base, then add one of five active concentrate cartridges to mix with it. The cartridges fit inside the selected moisturizer and contain a formulation designed to address the user’s skin concern, such as irritated skin, wrinkles, or skin fatigue. Clinique’s approach may go some way towards addressing the issue that women can’t find a moisturizer that’s right for their face: the brand ran a survey of US women and found that 86 percent of respondents cited this as a concern. To help users choose the right blend, Clinique will next year roll out online and in stores the digital Clinical Reality questionnaire. A 125ml bottle is priced at $39 and should last three months with the recommended twice-daily application.

Gary Coombe, who heads up Procter & Gamble’s Gillette unit, said that although the company’s grooming business has encountered major challenges, things are getting better, with US sales and volume growth in the double digits in the latest quarter. Globally, organic sales were up 4 percent versus the year-ago period. Coombe also said that the brand was growing its share of the DTC market in blades and razors, following a price cut in 2017 and some initiatives in its service. It has also recently launched men’s razors for sensitive skin, an innovation for which Gillette has high hopes, and is realigning its marketing with millennials.

Direct-to-Consumer subscription grooming brand, Dollar Shave Club, is launching a cologne brand in collaboration with Ann Gottlieb. BluePrint will launch with six fragrances, ranked by complexity and sophistication, and DSC is also trialing sample boxes containing all six scents. The new brand is just one of the brand’s recent initiatives. It is also trialing selling products in vending machines. The brand has expanded beyond monthly deliveries of blades and now offers other shave products as well as hair, skin and oral care items. New customers are encouraged to choose the Full Service offering, which includes a starter box of products from all the categories. The moves come as the competitive environment intensifies and the company’s sales flatten.

Beauty brand Glossier opened a flagship store on New York’s Lafayette Street, at number 123, where the brand was founded four years ago. Founder and CEO, Emily Weiss, said Glossier Flagship “is a nod” to customers that were with Glossier at the start, and ensures the brand stays in the conversation. The 3,000 square feet space is a permanent location and the "the ultimate physical expression of the brand", enabling customers to meet Glossier face-to-face. A part of the experience is a unique point-of-sale system, where online and offline sales are synced to allow customers to start an order in the store and finish it at home. It also features Glossier Offline Editors, the in-store representatives, who will “act like an educated and knowledgeable friend".

"Glossier To Open New Flagship Store In New York", Forbes.com, November 05, 2018